by Hugh Howey
Ivan reminded her again that he was really hoping she was going to make it tonight. She assured him once again that she intended to be there. Then they just talked, because that is what friends do. Unfeigned and unguarded friendship leads to pure conversation, and she often experienced this kind of fellowship with Ivan.
As they spoke, she absentmindedly pressed her hand up against the almost imperceptible lump in her coveralls where she’d stuffed the shredded paper. From some motivation that she deemed to be almost base and prurient, she felt an extreme amount of excitement and pleasure from the idea (and the act) of stealing raw materials to make homemade paper. She’d often tried to quantify the feeling. She’d analyzed it (or attempted to) and tried to make a judgment from that analysis about what her illegal activities had to say about her character. She’d even hoped to feel guilty about it, because feeling guilty might mean that she still had a place in the social structures of the world around her, and that she hadn’t utterly forsaken the society of the silo in pursuit of her own selfish ambitions. If she could feel guilty, then that would mean that she was still one of them. Nevertheless, in her innermost thoughts, she could find no home for self-recrimination. She knew that in her conscience, she’d already determined that it was the silo’s laws and culture that were criminal, and that her desire to write may be against the letter of the law, but it was not against any higher law that she could possibly imagine.
A subtle smile crept across her face as she embraced the feeling that the cocktail of adrenaline and whatever other self-manufactured chemicals gave her as it thrummed through her veins whenever she stole the raw materials for making paper. She was a junkie and she knew it.
She only enjoyed her feeling of euphoria for a moment though, and the smile quickly melted from her face when she glanced up and saw Joseph Kind staring at her with a look of what she could only interpret as confident malevolence. The high she’d just been on drained from her in microseconds, and at once she was overwhelmed with the feeling that all was lost. Joseph Kind was a picker, but he was definitely one of them. Maybe she was wrong about Joseph. She’d been wrong about people before. But she could not deny the way Joseph’s look made her feel.
He can’t know that I’ve stolen paper today… can he?
The six criminals chewed in silence. They were co-conspirators in the grand drama of revolutionary enterprise, and the silence gave weight to the proceedings. Most of the time, the room was basked in the weird ambiance of breathing and chewing and not much else. Chewing. That’s the way that paper is pulped in the underground. It is chewed, like the cud of the ruminants on the agricultural floors. From the word “ruminant” we get our word “ruminate”:
Ruminate: to go over in the mind repeatedly. To engage in contemplation.
Alexander taught them how to make paper this way. He said that prisoners throughout antiquity—in the other world, and in this one—had made black-market paper in this fashion. Once, he told them the story about prisoners during a great world war that chewed stolen bits of paper to make new paper for escape maps and notes that could be smuggled out to the underground resistance.
So the six guild friends chewed away like prisoner-revolutionaries manufacturing the means of their own escape. They each chewed and spit in indeterminate intervals. The skill was a learned one. It took time and experience to know just when the fibers were broken up enough and separated sufficiently so that they’d produce good paper. You had to learn not to think about where the paper had been, or how many thousands of times it had been recycled before.
In previous iterations perhaps dog hair or goat hair, or shreds of old garments and fragments of materials now unknown and lost in the mists of time might have been added to the eternal mix.
The source material could be derived from just about any old natural paper product: tissues, computer paper, cardboard boxes, wrapping paper, manila folders, notepaper, chit reports, or even envelopes. The source paper was always shredded first. Usually by hand. This is why pre-shredded paper stolen from the reclamation bags was such a great find. The bulk material, shredded into small bits, was then soaked overnight in buckets of water so that it could be chewed and pulped more easily.
Small metal frames had been fashioned laboriously from the heavy twists of wire used to seal the reclamation bags. The frames held fast the sections of tight wire mesh screening that had been purchased in the underground black-market, probably copped from the farming floors, or maybe from a willing black-market opportunist in Supply.
The pulp, when properly chewed to the right consistency, was then spit out onto the frames, spread to the appropriate thickness, and then dried for a day in the frames. When dried sufficiently, it would then be carefully (Oh, so carefully!) peeled from the frames and hung with clothespins to cure for another week. This process produced a very basic, coarse, and sometimes brittle paper. If the paper was intended for use for their own writing, they only cured the paper for five or six hours, then it would be pressed between two heavy objects, or, preferably in their makeshift paper press. The pressing would remove most of the ridges and valleys so that the charcoal could move more freely across the paper.
Alexander often talked of more advanced and involved papermaking processes. In the past, some of those processes were used by black-market paper guilds in the silo. But, the more intricate the process, the more things could go wrong, and the more likely it was that someone in authority would find out, and the guild would be busted.
Leah chewed in silence. Though there was occasionally some discussion, silence was really one of the hallmarks of papermaking meetings. This form of fellowship did not tax the emotions or put undue strain on friendships. In fact, Leah usually left the meetings with a sore jaw, but a cleansed soul. The friends spoke with their eyes and hearts more than they did with their mouths, and every so often, one of them would get that faraway look like they were writing, right there, right then, in their minds. Leah had written entire chapters, and had memorized them—word for word—while chewing and pulping the paper upon which she would eventually write those very chapters. There was a sublime beauty to the process that she could not convey but that she felt down to her very core.
She slipped her penknife carefully under the paper in the very corner of the frame. Slowly she eased the paper away from the mold and then, holding it up, she examined it in the light. The small, colored hairs and fibers stood out starkly against the eggshell colored sheet. One of the realities of homemade silo paper is that every sheet was unique. The paper itself took time and industry, and each leaf bore the signature of artistry and care. Leah removed a dozen sheets from a homemade press, and replaced them with the new sheet that she’d just removed from the frame, along with a handful of other sheets from the others that waited to be pressed.
The makeshift paper press was a brilliant feat of engineering, and it hid in plain sight disguised as a metal shelf unit. Each individual shelf within the unit was almost invisibly made up of two separate sheets of thin metal. Beneath the flange on each shelf, there was a hidden set of wing nuts that could be turned in order to press the paper.
She twisted each of the wing nuts to tighten up the press, and then pushed the whole unit back into place so that—without some prior knowledge—no one would know that the shelf was actually a device used to manufacture illegal paper.
Leah heard humming, and as she evened up the dozen sheets of new and finished paper in her hands, she turned to see that Ivan was kicked back in his chair, humming to himself and chewing slowly. His eyes were closed and she could tell that he was writing something in his mind—working out a turn of phrase, or maybe a description of something that had yet to come into existence. The other four members of the guild: Randall Paine, the sweeper and his wife Louise (Louise worked as a picker in the recycling unit up on 48); Mark Durant the farmer; and William Burke the porter—all were taking a break, sipping tea and discussing their latest writings.
She smiled as she looked at Ivan, and at
that moment he opened his eyes and returned the smile. He always had a smile for her, and he never pressured her to reveal what she was working on. He trusted that she would tell him about it whenever the time was right.
As she walked back towards the table, Ivan bent over and spit into the frame, working and smoothing the pulp with the flat end of a comb until it was just the way he wanted it. She always admired the care and intense concern that he always took with his work. The moment seemed poetic and beautiful to her, but then it is often true that when life is at its most poetic, the whole of it can turn on a dime. He’d just started to hum again when the door flew open and standing there in the open door, Leah could see Sheriff Tatum and the Mayor of the silo.
The trek down to the Deputy Sheriff’s office in the lower mids on 70 passed almost, but not completely, without conversation. It was only thirteen floors, but thirteen floors can seem like an eternity when you’re being arrested and taken to jail. What made it worse for Leah, was that the other five members of the guild—her closest friends—were on the pilgrimage up and not down. They were being escorted by the Mayor and the deputy from the up-top up to the Sheriff’s office on the uppermost floor. Why they were being separated she did not know—and it wasn’t for a lack of asking.
Sheriff Tatum and the deputy from the mids (she did not know his name) were mostly silent as they escorted Leah down the well-worn steps of the mids. A few times they asked her if she needed to stop for a break, or if she needed water, but other than that they kept to themselves.
“I know why I’m being arrested. That’s pretty clear,” Leah said as the sounds of their steps echoed around them. “I’d just like to know why I’m the only one heading down. Why are my friends being taken to the up-top? Can you tell me anything? Anything at all?” She thought she’d try again, though she’d made no headway with the two lawmen thus far.
“There’ll be plenty time for talk when we get you into your cell,” Sheriff Tatum replied. Same refrain.
So many bits of information, and none of it added up. Why was she being taken to 70? And by the Sheriff himself? Why was the Mayor going up with the others? Leah tried to even out her breathing as the steps multiplied beneath her. Porters buzzed by, usually slowing to take in the scene, staring at the young woman being escorted by two representatives of the law. She knew a few of the porters personally, so she was certain that by now the talk would already be bouncing around from person to person and from floor to floor. Her life was now being analyzed by strangers and by people who barely knew her. She tried to care what these others thought of her, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not. She was not one of them.
Her thighs were already starting to protest, but there weren’t many flights left to go, so she kept her head down and concentrated on the steel treads and the railing and how not to let her fears and imagination run away with her. She thought of the martyrs, and of Alexander’s stories of sacrifice and resistance. She thought of Alexander and how willfully he’d gone out to clean. Then she wondered if she’d ever chewed on the shredded remnants of Alexander’s life files.
The jail cell in the deputy sheriff’s office in the mids was cool and dark, and the feeling of incarceration was more than just tangible. The whole world seemed to press in on her, and she could feel, in a very real way, the impression of history and the ages swirling in the air around her. There was a world out there… outside… and there had been a world long before someone built this silo, and all of that—the old world, and antiquity—maybe it was all buried under the ground too, but it was still out there, and there were stories both here and there that, without voices of their own, begged to be told.
Still, here she was, locked up. It felt like she’d marked and passed the moment in her life when it was all coming to an end. Her mind dwelt for a moment on the memory of Alexander and the short time he’d spent in a cell before he’d been sent out to clean. Then she thought about innumerable other prisoners—not just in the silo—but prisoners of conscience from other epochs and from another, earlier world. Alexander had told her that stories of resistance and refusal had always marked the history of humanity.
Maybe she was just being melodramatic. Perhaps she was just a young, foolish woman with dreams of self-importance. Yeah, maybe. Her reverie was broken by the sounds of a key turning in a lock.
Sheriff Tatum entered the cell trailed by the deputy from the mids. Tatum held a file in his hands, but he didn’t refer to it or even allude to anything that might be in it. The file was a prop. Maybe it was intended to subconsciously indicate to her the real power of paper. Maybe her life was in that file, and the dispensation of that life was at the whim of the one who wielded it.
“So,” the Sheriff started, “before you start beating me up with questions, or demand for me to explain the reasons you’ve been brought to a cell down here instead of in the up-top, let me tell you what you need to know. You are here because we have word that your father is currently in the down-deep, way down on 141 and, as a courtesy only, we’ve decided to hold you here while we complete our investigation.”
“So my father can visit me?” she asked. “Really? Because William was arrested with me, he has family in the down-deep. Why isn’t he being held here?”
“The details of the investigation are not really your business, Leah. You are already guilty of aiding in the manufacture of black-market paper. You admitted as much when we caught you red-handed. You had black-market paper in your hands, and there were molds and pulp and all of the other materials and tools for making paper right there in that room.” Tatum leaned back against the bars and cocked his right leg back up and back, resting his foot against the cold steel. “Your father is… a person of interest… in the case, and we’re digging into a number of other irregularities. So just relax and get a good handle on your position.”
Leah nodded and crossed her arms. “So let’s drop the charade about this being some kind of courtesy. Why don’t you just tell me? Exactly what is my position, Sheriff?”
Tatum rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Okay. If you want to do it that way. You’ve been arrested and charged with the same crimes that got your mentor—the man with whom you shadowed—sent out to clean. Perhaps you ought to be thinking about that, and not obsessing with where you are geographically in the silo?”
“My father had nothing to do with this,” Leah said sharply. “He didn’t know we were making paper.”
“Maybe he didn’t… but maybe he did. Frankly, I’ve got a silo that’s on a slow boil, and the making of paper is the least of my concerns.” Tatum looked sideways at the deputy and took a deep breath before continuing.
“Listen, Leah…,” Tatum fidgeted with the file, and then ran his fingers through his hair. His confidence and bravado seemed to melt away and to her, right now, he seemed to be nervous. In fact, if she was reading the situation right, he looked to be more nervous than she was. He continued talking and his voice had dropped a notch, and in it she detected the first ripples of fear; not on the surface, but below the surface, there was fear in his voice. “…there’s word of some stirrings in the down-deep. Maybe some trouble brewing. We don’t know if your father is taking part, but there are people up top who think that he is.”
There it was. The room shuddered, or it seemed to. Leah felt her legs weaken, and her head grew light. Was he talking about an uprising?
“Frankly, I’m not concerned about the paper thing right now,” Tatum said, “and neither is the Mayor. We’ve bigger fish to fry. We want to know what is going on in the down-deep and who is involved. We don’t know if your little paper making operation has something to do with what’s stirring down there, but it would be easy enough for us to assume that the two issues are somehow linked.”
She was starting to feel faint. She blinked and felt the room twist ever-so-slightly around her.
“Your friends are guilty, Leah, and so are you. We haven’t had a cleaning since Alexander went out two years ago, and there
hasn’t been a multiple cleaning in over a decade. I need to tell you that your friends’ futures very well may rest solidly in your hands. We need information, and we’re going to need it fast.”
“Wha—,” she was having trouble forming words. The room was moving faster now and she felt her stomach shift with it. “What can… what can I possibly do?”
“We’re going to let you go, Leah. We’re going to let you go, and you’re going to work for us.” Tatum stared into her eyes and he did not blink. “You’re going to work for us, and if you don’t, your friends are going to be sent out, and they are going to die, and you’ll never see them again.”
The spinning magnified, and darkness rose up in her eyes and obscured her view, and then she was falling.
Blackness.
The hard concrete bunk in the cell was cold and she still had her eyes closed, but now she could hear the voices as they came in and out of her consciousness like waves.
“…SAMIZDAT…”
“…Underground publishing… books… Alexander…”
“…some kind of distribution system… porters, sweepers, supply, maintenance…”
“…copy each book by hand. It’s crazy…”
“…what if she won’t cooperate?”
“…clean. And if she doesn’t, they’ll all likely die anyway…”
